Still not? Then how about when John Appleby of Bluefin explains it in his BW on HANA Frequently Asked Questions blog: “SAP HANA is much faster than regular relational databases like Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server, the data warehouse performs much faster – but more than that, it’s cheaper as well.”

Visualize That!

Stephen Few recently organized a dashboard competition. He humbly said “I don’t feel that I should judge the efforts of others unless I’m willing to submit my own work for scrutiny as well” – and went on to explain why his own dashboard is better than the other entries (“let’s consider a few ways that this design succeeds where others fell short”)

Talking of Superior Performance…

‘Tis the season of performance reviews, which most people hate. It wasn’t always so, says this infographic of performance review history. And if you believe the conclusion that “social performance management” is the way to go, then you should take a look at SAP SuccessFactors with SAP Jam (SAP employees are moving to the system for this year’s goal-setting).

But Is It Safe?

Yes, your data is secure in the cloud. As explained by Lars Dalgaard on a recent kickoff call, SuccessFactors has thousands of customers, and by pooling resources, can spend a lot more time and money than any individual company could. After all, it’s just like your bank: they do a better job of keeping your money safe than you can — and there’s an encryption option, so access would be useless anyway.

I might be a bit cynical, but I suspect it’s not the technical arguments that will count in most organizations – it will be whether other reputable companies have already made the leap. So why not join Pepsi’s 300,000 employees in the cloud?

You Got What You Paid For, So Why Are You Complaining?

It seems that there might sometimes be a clash between “analytics” and “social”. For example, today’s airlines have great analytics, and they seem to have concluded that, for whatever reason, people generally prefer low prices instead of a pleasurable flight. After all, it IS possible to have a wonderful flying experience: just travel in first class, or jump in a private jet. But most of us have concluded that we’re not willing to pay the price. Another example: if you chose not to pay the premium for a changeable ticket, is it reasonable to complain on twitter about change fees?

People clearly assume change fees are only about administration costs, and so are outraged when a change costs more than the original ticket. But airlines brandish the threat of fees as a price differentiation mechanism – which means that your cheap non-changeable flight is essentially subsidized by the business person who is not sure when his meeting will end.

But as sentiment analysis guru Seth Grimespoints out, the challenge is passenger perception: “people decline an demand to pay more for a seat that doesn’t cost an airline any more“ and “injury is added to price-gouging insult.”

Companies have long used marketing techniques to overcome strictly rational thinking. “Underserved” criticism on social media might just be the flip side of this effect, and may start swaying packaging choices (e.g. as with enterprise selling, companies may start with a higher price and then offer discounts, rather than using a low price and expensive addons) – call it “offer social engineering”